It was an exciting night in Poring rainforest. I finally found the insect that I had been looking for years. Many friends are also very impressed with this insect. Please read on to see it.
I suppose Poring rainforest is an ideal site for night walk due to its rich flora and fauna. Surprisingly, no tourist asks for a night safari in Poring, so I had to hire a nature guide to start one at 7pm. The fee is about RM70-100 (?USD20-30) per hour. We have a happy start when we spot a white wolf spider with red mouth.
Above: A litter frog that has big head, cute..
Then we saw a giant river toad, which is endemic to Borneo and famous for its foul smell. I didn’t smell anything though. There is a myth that this toad will laugh if you tickle its belly.
We rub its belly gently with a twig. You may watch the 1-min video below to see if it laughs:
There are quite a number of big spider around, like the leopard spider above. It is easy to spot them coz their eyes reflect our torchlight.
Small spider waits for prey in fungus cup.
A very long stick insect. The guide says the village kids are used to eat the eggs of stick insect because its eggs are big and look like chocolate.
Fat stick insect on tapioca leaf. Seem like stick insect loves tapioca leaf coz I found a few more.
Here comes the highlight of my night walk. Can you spot anything in the photo above?
Can’t see it? Below is the answer. It’s a Leaf mimicking Grasshopper (Chorotypus gallinaceus) that perfectly camouflaged as a dead leaf.
I had heard about this insect. I’m so glad to see one. When I was busy taking its photo, suddenly it just played dead and dropped itself to the ground. The guide and me shouted, “Oh sh*t!” because it would be very hard to spot it among the foliage. Luckily we located it again.
We also saw a big snail near Kipungit Waterfall. So far it’s the largest forest snail that I’ve ever seen.
Above: Giant bent-toed gecko on tree trunk.
There are some tiger leeches lurking in the bush. They were so excited when they sensed our heat.
Another highlight is the mating of two tiger leeches. It lasts for quite a long time and both leeches caress each other like crazy. You may see their action in the 1-min video below: Click Here for bigger video
Our night walk ended at 11pm, just before the heavy rain came. I can’t wait to go back there again one day. If you love such activity, Poring is highly recommended for night safari.
Here comes the highlight of my trip in Crocker Range Park, the night walk! I did two night walks, 1st night in Insectarium, and 2nd night in 2.036KM Crocker trail. You see nothing much in both places during daytime, but they turn into a busy world when night falls. If you are interested in night walk, you can arrange in advance with the Park at Administration Office or Crocker Nature Center during office hours. They will send a ranger to guide you. Usually the walk starts at 7:30pm.
Night Walk in Insectarium
For my 1st night walk in Insectarium, the Park sends two ladies to accompany me, wow. They asked, “would you mind if the guide is female?” I smiled and replied, “No… Of course not” (why should I, hehe..). Oh, by the way, the lady at the left is Tomomi Kan, a Japanese volunteer from JICA. At the right is Lucy Suin, a Sabah Parks staff.
No kidding… these girls have sharp eyes. They started to discover bugs the moment we stepped into Insectarium. Normally girls will scream when they see bugs. However, these girls are so happy to find creepy creatures in the dark, like enjoying a treasure hunt. With the aid of torchlight, we search every inch of Insectarium and left no leaf unturned.
One by one, the bugs reveal themselves under their torchlight. I wonder how they did it. Probably they are so used to insect collection. Crocker Range Park has over 400 species of insects, making the Park one of the best spots for collecting specimen.
Above: this might be a Malaysian Earth Tiger (Cyriopagopus thorelli) tarantula spider
Above: a cricket disguised as the tip of leaf!
There are more bugs discovered when we moved closer to the pond and stream areas. It was such a joyful experience!
Above: an agamid that can change color in minute
Above: a very long stick insect found by Lucy, the highlight of the 1st night walk.
It started to rain at 10pm, so we had to stop our night walk and said goodbye to each other. Anyway, I’m really happy to bag so many good shots.
Night Walk in Crocker Trail
Because of the exciting experience, I decided to arrange another night walk in Crocker Trail (2.036 KM) next day. This time the Park sends Mr. Rosandy Angkusup to guide me. I feel sorry to make them work until late night in fasting month (Puasa), so I tipped all the guides. Same as the lady guides, Rosandy has a trained eyes to beat the smart camouflage by bugs, especially stick insects.
Above: a moulting cicada. The moulting was so slow that we couldn’t wait until it finished.
Above: the cotton-like substance is a group of Wooly aphid insect, amazing…
We saw at least 3 fireflies in the jungle.
It is so impressive that crickets can look so different to one another.
Above: this alien-like cricket was shown in National Geographic channel before. The Crocker Trail is far more promising because the trail is inside the real forest.
Besides bugs, we also saw a Shama bird sleeping on tree, a mouse deer, heard the loud barking of a barking deer (probably smell our presence) and 2 civets at the edge of primary rainforest. We would get some if we carry hunting rifle, haha. Of course, poaching is prohibited in national park.
Above: giant river toad
Stick Insects
Rosandy is so professional in spotting stick insects (I always miss it!). I never saw so many stick insects in one night, nor do I know stick insects have so many species and variety. Some can play dead and some can release foul smell as a defense. Some can fly while some can’t. But all of them have one thing in common – they look like stick.
Above: very long stick insect
We moved so slowly that the night walk ended at 12:30am and our torchlight was almost out of battery. This is the best night walk I’ve had. I’ll be back one day.
WARNING: I know this blog would attract insect collectors. Please be informed that collection of any flora & fauna in national park without a permit, whether the subject is dead or alive, is a serious offense. You will be fined heavily or even jailed for illegal collection. Crocker Range National Park is NOT a place for you to look for toy pet!!!
Last time I blogged that Tawau is an ecology desert and its ecotourism is over. Actually Tawau still has the last remaining natural heritage, Tawau Hills Park (Taman Bukit Tawau). After a few days of exploring this park, it turns out to be one of my favourite sites, and I will go there every week if I live in Tawau, which is so near to the park. Gazetted as a State Park in 1979 and 24KM away from Tawau town, Tawau Hills Park is an important water catchment area consists of five major rivers, i.e. Tawau River, Merotai River, Kinabutan River, Mantri River and Balung River. The park covers an area of 27,972 ha (about 280 sq. KM).
Last month I took an express long-distance bus from Kota Kinabalu to Tawau, which was an 8-hour journey (one way ticket costs RM45, about USD12). Taking a flight will only take 45 minutes. But sum up all the fees such as flight ticket, baggage charge, airport tax and transport from airport to Tawau town, it will cost over RM100 one way, too much for a poor traveller like me. From Tawau town, you need to get a taxi to the park, which costs RM30 one way, and there is no bus going there. The taxi driver may offer RM50 to pick you up for returning to Tawau. FYI, you can book such transport for RM30 at the counter of the park. Don’t waste your money.
By the time I reached Tawau Hills Park, it was about 5PM. I saw many long-tailed macaque monkeys were moving from the nearby oil palm plantation to the park. The park became their playground and they were free to loiter around. They screamed, they f**ked, they fought, they chased one another, and they swam in the river. For unknown reason, I hate long-tailed macaque, probably it bite me before.
The photo above looks like a happy monkey enjoying soaking in the cool water. In fact, it was screaming and beg for forgiveness from alpha male, after he lost the fight and escaped into the water.
My late grandfather was used to keep a pig-tailed macaque as pet in his house in countryside. Though also wild, pig-tailed macaque is friendlier than long-tailed macaque. Villagers seldom keep long-tailed monkey as pet as they are more aggressive and tend to bite people. If you are lucky, you will see red-leaf monkey (maroon langurs) in the park. Further inside the jungle, you would see other primates such as Borneon gibbon, grey-leaf monkey and slow loris. Rangers say they spot orangutan very deep inside the hill forest. The rare white leaf-fronted monkey is only found here (too bad I didn’t see any, though a sighting was reported during my stay).
Ok, enough with the monkey, just to let you know you can see them in morning and evening. I was staying in a 4-bed room in a chalet in the park. It was only RM20 a bed/night for a room with 4 beds, 2 small tables and a fan. The toilet and bathroom are at the end of the walkway outside. That time was not peak season, so I could have the whole room, and even the whole chalet! At night you could see many small animals such as frogs and lizards around the area, which is what I like.
During my 4-day stay in Tawau Hills Park, I tried the trails to Sulphur Springs (3.2 KM) and Bukit Gelas Waterfall (2.5 KM). Each trail took only 1 hour+ of walking. Since I walked slowly and looked for photography subjects, I took more than 6 hours to go back and forth (it would take longer if it didn’t rain in the afternoon). Due to prolong drought caused by El Nino, the trails were dry and leech-free. As this park is a water catchment area, the trails could be flooded by rivers during heavy rain. The Park HQ even has siren to warn swimmers, if the upstream station detects any flash flood.
Tawau Hills Park is a mix of primary lowland and hill dipterocarp rainforests, 60% of them is virgin forest and the remaining is secondary forest. Along the trails, you will see many giant commercial timbers such as seraya, selangan, keruing and belian. Some trees have huge buttress roots. I was told that if you were lost in a jungle, just hit the buttress with a wood, and the rescuer can hear you 1KM away. This is more effective than shouting for help. The trails are along the rivers, so it is quite refreshing.
Wildlife you would see here are leopard cats, wild boar, giant tree squirrel, clouded leopard, forest tortoise, giant river toad, etc. Sighting is not guaranteed. Sadly, I didn’t see any of the above. The first bird you will notice is the noisy hornbill. Out of 8 species of hornbills in Sabah, you can find six of them here (black, bushy-crested, helmeted, rhinocerous, white-crowned and wreathed hornbills). Three rare species of pheasants (crested-fireback, great argus, Malayan peacock pheasants) also live in this park. I saw the very beautiful Asian Paradise Flycatcher that has an extremely long tail like paradise bird. At first I thought it was a “flying towel”. When my camera struggled to auto-focus it via the leaves and tree branches, it flied away, sigh…
In the park, there are three main peaks in the form of extinct volcanoes, namely, Mt. Magdalena (1,310M), Mt. Lucia (1,189M) and Mt. Maria (1,067M). It takes 2 days to conquer the highest peak, Mt. Magdalena. The trail is 17 KM long and you will spend a night in Mt. Lucia Hostel (at 10.55 KM). After 1,000 M above sea level, you will enter mossy forest, a totally different vegetation from lowland forest. It is far more challenging than climbing Mt. Kinabalu. If this is too adventurous for you, you may try the 1.9 KM trail to Bombalai Hill (530M), which is a a remain of an ancient crater. The rugged volcanic landscape of the park is abundant with volcano rocks ranging in age from Middle Miocene to Quaternary. I save Mt. Magdalena for the future.
Most part of the trail is next to a river. It is an ideal spot for nude swimming, coz I didn’t see anyone tried jungle trekking. The water is unpolluted and is piped to the households in Tawau and Semporna. Ever wonder why the rivers here still flow in dry season? The rainforest serves as a water retention system for the rain water. The forest ground can hold the water and slowly releasing it to the stream, even after month of drought. If the trees in this park are sold by greedy politicians to lumbering companies, the rivers here will be polluted by eroded soil and run dry. Most Sabahans underestimate the importance of rainforest. That’s why whenever there is any serious flood and landslide, the politicians can get away easily by saying these are the Act of God and has nothing to do with the forest clearance that is approved by them. Crocker Range Park and Maliau Basin are under threat now. So, just protect our forest and stop blaming God / Allah.
Pay attention to the small stream and you would find something interesting, like the green sucker fish below. Before that, I thought all sucker fishes were dark in color.
The water volume of Gelas Waterfall was so small during dry season. I lost my mood to photograph it when I also saw two big logs lean on the waterfall, spoiling the whole view. Anyway, my photo album has a few nice close-up of the waterfall. It is very tempting to jump into the clean and cold water under this waterfall. But be warned that there were many cases of drowning here, especially students. Their bodies couldn’t be found until they floated on top. No survivor can live to tell how they were dragged into the water. Don’t swim there alone. As a matter of fact, all waterfall is a beautiful dead trap.
You would find the butterfly below sipping water in the river bank of Gelas Waterfall. They moved so fast and I only managed to get one shot. It looks like a Green Dragontail butterfly (lamproptera meges virescens).
Frankly speaking, I felt very strong presence of spirits in the remaining 400 M to Gelas Waterfall. One of my photo even shows something like a ghost orb. Well, it could be reflection of dust or moist. After I heard the tragedy stories from my aunty later, then I confirmed there were probably unseen entity lingering nearby the waterfall area. I always had such goose-bump experience in certain jungle trails, but I don’t quite bother as I can’t see “them”.
The thing bothers me the most is a flying blood sucker called Deer Fly. Its bite is worse than leech as the wound can stay itchy for week. The itch is under the skin, scratching also can’t help much. I encounter deer fly in almost every jungle trekking. They can follow you a long way, land on your exposed skin to look for opportunity to suck blood. I kept sweeping them away with hand but they never wanted to give up. If I sweated heavily, the smell would overexcite them and even attracted more deer flies, and I ended up having 3 or more of them following me. The only way to stop them is to kill them. I just waited for them to land on my face or hand, then hit them by palm. I don’t want to kill anything in the wild but I have no choice..
Besides tall trees, you will be amazed by the rich variety of fungi, lichens, shrubs and undergrowth vegetation. Despite my visit in dry month, I saw many types of fungus and mushroom in different sizes, shapes and colours. I think this park really can open a Fungus + Mushroom Garden, no kidding. Previous scientific field trips found that Tawau Hills Park has over 150 species of orchid, include the rare elephant-ear orchid. Most of the forest is yet to be explored, and the researchers believe many new plant species are waited to be discovered and given a name.
There are some big fungus that I’ve ever seen. Fungus decompose dead trees and recycle the carbonic substances, so they are very important for the forest. The humid and dim rainforest is suitable for their growth.
Everytime I went to Tawau Hills Park, I saw different lizard. This time I spotted a comb-crested agamid. Later I spotted a gliding lizard. It thought it did a very good job to blend into the tree, so I could go very near for more close-up photos.
Just slow down and observe the surrounding, you will see some interesting bugs in the park. Even cricket can be so pretty. Is it a “tiger cricket” below?
When threaten, pill millipede can roll its body into ball. This time I waited and saw how long it would stay rolled. It opened up bit by bit, kept watchful eyes outside, and started moving after 20 minutes.
The photo below is a feather bug. I passed by a tree and saw a few “bird feathers” on the trunk. A closely look revealed that it’s a bug. A few of them even mimic the movement of feather in the wind. Amazing bug…
The funniest bug of all is the ant-snatching assassin bug (Acanthaspis sp). It collects dust, sand and soil particles, plant parts and even empty ant corpses, and stick those stuffs on their abdomen. Such heavy “backpack” is a camouflage to confuse their predators. Can you see it in the photo below? I spotted 3 of them in the park.
Most animals come out at night, so I joined the night walk (costs RM30) guided by a ranger. We toured around between the forest and a nearby oil palm plantation, also the Bombalai trail for two hours. I hoped to see the king cobra and big ular sawa snake that the ranger told me. Too bad I did not see any, but I spotted Malayan civets, fat porcupine and firefly.
The time between 6:30pm to 11pm is the best time to look for anurans (frogs & toads), especially after rain. There are 64 species of anurans in Tawau Hills Park, 31 species are endemic to Borneo and 3 are endemic to Sabah (research by Mr. Kueh Boon Hee, University Malaysia Sabah). That means for every frog/toad that you see here, more than 50% chance it is found in Borneo only!
Basically that’s all about my trip. Luckily the weather was good. Now I can’t wait to have another trip to climb Mt. Magdalena. Do expect me to blog about Tawau Hills Park in the future. This park has sulphur springs, lowland rainforest, montane forest, mountains, waterfalls, volcano remain, etc. The tour operators should create a package and promote it.
Most Sabah travel agents are still lacking some creativities as they only know to demand more quota to climb Mt. Kinabalu and dive in Sipadan, as if there is nowhere else is worth to visit in Sabah. They only wait for others to develop and promote a new tourism product, when it becomes famous, only then they try to offer the same package, trying to get an easy share of the profit. They should learn more about Blue Ocean Strategy, so we can have both monkey and gold.
Miki Survival Camp is a tourism project initiated by the community of Kiau. After they ran the project, villagers started to realize the benefits of the conservation. Instead of clearing the forest for farming, they keep the jungles, especially those near to Miki camp. Personally I like to visit those pristine places other than those attractions developed by blood-sucking and money-minded tour operators, who only want to build luxury chalets and charge tourists by thousand$$$.
After having warm porridge as lunch, our guide, Jimmy, led us for the afternoon education tour. He showed us some of the common traps used by the locals to catch wild animals. All traps are cleverly designed, with ropes, wood, strings, gravity and spring force as mechanism, no battery required. They either setup the trap in the animal path or put bait inside the trap. Jimmy also blew a folded ginger leaf, making sound to lure kijang (a lamb like small deer).
Few traps can be quite nasty, like the Vunsoi trap, if the wild boar or deer trips on a string, it will release a wooden bow spring that swing a spear. They even have smaller traps for snake, squirrel, mouse and jungle fowl. To avoid being wordy, I put more photos in album with captions, for your further reading. Tourists who join Miki Camp will get a small book, with info on trap setting. Besides the traps, Jimmy also told us the edible stuffs such as wild ginger fruit (tampo) and fern (pakis), herbal plant such as wadan vine, poisonous plant such as tohipoi, wild plum and bekago. It is interesting and useful to know all these.
Because of the wet forest floor, as we moved deeper inside the jungle, we were attacked by legion of tiger leeches. The leeches were hiding in the vegetation next to the trail, as we walked by, our raincoats were also sweeping the plant, harvesting leeches like vacuum. Haha… this is also part of the experience. We checked on each other regularly, remove leeches on our raincoat, so nobody got bitten (miracle!). Jimmy collected over 10 leeches and rub them in his palm, the heat killed all the leeches, and he showed me the “leech ball”, iyaak!
Later we were back to the campsite and Jimmy demo some craft works and skills, like making bamboo mat and roof, splitting firewood (in fastest and effortless way), creating bamboo fish trap (berusat), using blowpipe, etc. While we were happily sharing our excitement of the day, Rayner had started cooking our dinner, probably lizard soup and worm noodles, just kidding..
Early dinner in jungle is advisable. If you eat at night with light on, it will attract all sorts of flying bugs from the forest. We had fried rice, mixed vegetables, ketchup chicken and crab soup as our dinner. Rayner is such a good cook, or we were too hungry. It was also nice to have a cup of coffee or tea in the cold.
Jungle seemed to get dark sooner. The cold night kicked in, after a heavy meal, everyone already felt sleepy next to the fire place.
NIGHT WALK
The next programme was the one I anticipated the most, the night walk. In daytime, we didn’t see a lot of wild things, I only saw a huge stink bug and a Daddy Long Legs (Harvestmen Spider). However, the jungle is a extremely busy world at night. We started the night walk at 7:00pm and the noisy surrounding sounded very promising. In search of rare and weird bug, some foreigner photographers had visited this site much more earlier than me. In fact, this area is the buffer zone between Kiau Village and Kinabalu Park that is rich in biodiversity. With the aid of torchlight, we slowly walked across the jungle and scanned the plant and trees like treasure hunt.
After a short walk, the guide said, “turn off your light.” “Huh? what?” I replied but did so anyway. Then we saw patches of glowing green in total darkness (see photo above). “That’s a glowing fungus,” Jimmy said. When we turned on the light again, we only saw very ordinary green fungus on a rotten tree log. I was really thrilled and setup my tripod, attempting to capture the glow. I only took one shot coz I didn’t want everyone waited for me. Later we also spotted glowing mushroom.
Then the next interesting creature we saw was a very tiny frog (see photo above). It is so small that any normal frog can swallow it in one snap. It was sitting on a ordinary-size leaf. We carried on and saw more bugs, most were creepy types that could make girls screamed. I didn’t stop clicking my camera, every few steps there would be new things, like firefly, frogs (some are poisonous), stick insect, cricket, grasshopper, forest cockroaches, gecko, cave centipede, big snail, etc.
Guess what was the biggest bug we saw that night? It was not frog and lizard. The jackpot of this night walk was a giant caterpillar (see photo below)! This caterpillar is longer than my palm, probably about 7 inches long. Jimmy said, “I also never see anything like this before. You are so lucky.” Anyone can tell me what it is? We tried to look for the horned frog but didn’t find any. I was so happy already anyway. The cold weather drained the power of my camera battery very fast. My last battery only had two bars of power left. I needed to save it for next day. Damn… otherwise I would have spent more time and shot more…
About an hour later, we returned to our camp. There was no electricity and TV, so we went to bed, without taking a bath, lol… Though our camps were not too far apart, it was totally dark and I felt that my camp was alone. It was so noisy at night, with sounds from frogs, bugs and birds. Some lame writers like to describe this as the “orchestra” of jungle sounds. To me, it is just plain noisy. Since I was so tired, that didn’t really bother me. In midnight, I was waked up by a loud bang. Next day the guide told me it was bamboo “exploding”, it is common and can be as loud as gun shot.
Temperature still dropped in late night. So cold that everyone of us waked up and put on more clothing. Very soon I wanted to pee. I grabbed my torchlight and walked to the toilet. On the way back, I saw something moving slowly on a log. It was a very beautiful snake, with gold color and tiger-like stripes on its body, and got red eyes! It saw me and stayed motionless. Quickly I ran to my camp, took my camera and shot some photos. I was so glad I didn’t step on this snake by accident. When I was back to town, a snake expert told me that it’s a Bornean Dark-necked Slug Snake (Asthenodipsas borneensis) which feeds on snails and slugs. It’s endemic to Borneo and I’m very lucky to see one.
Is it a leech or slug or snake? I saw this unknown creature appeared at least twice in the newspapers. People seem to be bothered by this slimy worm that has a head looks like hammer. A smart ass reader even said it was a “wire snake”, making me chuckled a little. Actually it is a land planarian, also known as hammerhead worm or shovel head worm, it is something very common in countryside.
Hammerhead worm is harmless to human. When I was a kid, I picked it up once (I grabbed ANY bug when young) and found that it was very sticky. It likes dark and damp area, and the best time to find them is at night or early morning. You would see it gliding on moist surface such as wet soil and leaves. Its body is long and flat, with narrow stripes, and can grow more than 30 cm long. Wherever it goes, it will leave a slimy trail behind, like snails and slugs.
Hammerhead worm is native to Asia. However, it spreads to all over the world as far as USA and UK, through the pot of plant. The common species is dark brown in color, like the photo below. They do not have predator, probably because of their slimy flat body that makes them look like an awful meal. But they do feed on their own kind. You can’t kill it by cutting it into half, as it will grow into two worms. Just pour salt or vinegar on it to end its life, but there is little reason you want to kill it.
Hammerhead worm likes to hang around in garden, so you might think that it is a vegetarian pest which feeds on plant only. Surprisingly, juicy earthworm is their main diet, and they also eat slugs and insect larvae. When they attack an earthworm, they coil their sticky body over the earthworm, “melt” it with enzyme, then slowly eating it. Ill… I can imagine it isn’t a pretty scene. Their strong appetize for earthworm and ability to reproduce quickly pose a disaster to some earthworm farms. An expert said hammerhead worms once wiped out 3,000 lbs of worms in less than a week.
Above: land planarian preying on a snail
When I study more about it, I find that hammerhead worm is really an odd animal. It does not have anus. In fact its mouth is its anus and located in the middle of the body. Isn’t it cute? Keep it as a pet and your mom will be dearly impressed.
Chinese loves bird nest. Actually the nest is made of saliva from swiftlets. I have plenty of saliva in thick and thin forms for sale, if you are fond of eating saliva. Chinese says the bird nest contains minerals, rare protein and nutrients that keep you young and make your skin shines. There are two kinds of bird nests, i.e., (1) black bird nest, which contains 30% to 70% of feather, and (2) white bird nest, which has less feather and more expensive.
Madai Cave (Gua Madai), which is known as “Swiftlet Mountain” by locals, is one of the important producers of high-quality black bird nest in Sabah. You can see the limestone outcrop, where Madai Cave located, next to the road of Kunak, a small town between Tawau and Lahad Datu. It is the second biggest cave in Sabah.
Idahan people are the traditional owner of Madai Cave. For profit sharing, the cave is divided logically into different sections, which have different owner and can be passed on to their next generation. To visit the cave, you need to get a visitor pass at the security gate before you enter the village in the foothill. A guide will accompany you for a guided tour inside the cave, which is only a 10-minute away from the village.
Don’t worry if you see the hangman noose on the way. This is the sign to warn those bad people who want to steal their property. If you read the news, you would know that there were many armed foreigners tried to rob their bird nest. Tourists are very welcome here. Bird nest can fetch hundreds of dollars per Kg, so each swiftlet is a goose that lays gold egg (bird nest). The interesting thing about the baby swiftlet is – it always position its butt outside the nest to poo (then the nest can remain clean), so… visitors should not talk when they look to top, unless you want something drop into your mouth.
Though the cave is huge, the air in the cave is warm and humid, and full with amonia smell coming from the bats and birds guano that accummulated over hundreds of years. You could walk on the boardwalk so you don’t need to step on soft and soggy guano of 1 foot deep. It is total darkness deeper inside. Point your torchlight to the darkest spot and you will find many cave centipedes on the wall. As they dislike light, they will escape from your light. This dark-side dweller looks very nasty, like the creature in horror movie, luckily this long-leg species is not venomous. But just watch out where you lean in the dark ok.
Girls who are very afraid of cockroach could find their nightmare here, coz there are probably millions of them living in this cave. It is not too bad if you follow the boardwalk and you can’t really see them in the dark. But when I moved off-trail to take photos, WOW, there are hundreds of them in every square Meter (note the number of red dots in the photo above). They can hide themselves quickly into guano. These cockroaches eat the guano and corposes of dead birds, and become an essential part of the cave ecology.
Besides the cave, I was also shown the “Stage,” a flat rock surface that temporarily placed the dead before they are transferred to other cave in the old day. The artefacts (e.g. coffin) of their ancestors were moved to the museum. The cave is very noisy with chirping of hundreds of swiftlets, which have the ability to use voice to “see” and navigate in the dark. The edible bird nest swiftlets use the same echo-location mechanism like bats, the only difference the pitch is in lower frequency and audible. The Idahan people setup a few security huts inside and outside a few cave opening, to prevent some outsiders come in to steal the precious bird nest.
Knowing that I was photographing, the guides were trying to show me where were the good spots. But the cave is so dark that my camera couldn’t focus on anything, until they helped to light up the area with their torchlight (Thank you!). During non-harvest season, the locals also earn some side-income from tourists (need to arrange in advance). They were very keen to show me around. Since I only dropped by shortly this time, I will come back again.
April, August and December are the harvesting months, you could see them harvest the bird nest, the bird nest is harvested on a sustainable manner, that means the broods have a chance to grow up and fly away before their nests are taken. The photo on left above is the photo of bird nests, the right is the traditional harvesting tool. The swiftlets are not stupid. They always build their nests on highest spot, safe from predators.
To harvest the nest, the workers need to climb up the ladders, which are made of rotan (rattan wood), with a basket to store the nest. It is a very dangerous job and carpet of guano can’t save a person falling from hundred-feet high. They also need to detach the nest carefully and don’t break it, as a flawless whole nest can get the best price in market.
No people say they don’t find butterfly fascinating. Kipandi Butterfly Park is the best place to see these beautiful insects in different colors and it is fairly accessible. Just take the road from Penampang to Tambunan. After an hour of driving, you will pass by a road with 120 degree turn going uphill. Be careful coz it is a black-zone for car accident. People believe there are spirits wandering on the hill next to it, the Widow Hill. Within a minute, you will see the park at your right.
The ticket fee for Malaysian adult is RM10, foreigner tourist is RM20 (about USD$6). Childern get half price.
Butterfly is most active in the morning, so that’s the best time to visit the park. Less butterfly will come out in rainy day and hot afternoon. I went there in noon. There were some butterflies still busy looking for nectar. If you come in big group, you can book a night tour to hunt for bugs at night.
Kipandi is more than a butterfly farm. They also keep a few insects as “pet”. I almost could not see praying mantis on the branch coz its body looked like dry leaf. The rhino horn beetles don’t fly in daytime, so the workers can leave them on the grass for me to photograph freely. Hmm… the rhino horn got horny too. They feed the beetles with sugar cane. At first I thought its horn is for display only, but they told me the horn really can deliver a painful pinch.
There is a small shop where you can buy souvenir, light food and drink. No lunch is offered so you better have your meal before you come. For beetle lovers, you can buy the insect keychain (RM15) and other bug specimens.
Before you enter the butterfly garden, you must check out the exhibition room of hundreds of bug specimens. I didn’t know that bugs in Sabah can grow so big. Besides impressive collection of various local and overseas butterfly species, beetles, tarantula, spiders, millipedes, scorpions, cicadas, centipedes, etc. specimens are also found here.
The guide, Jay, seems to able to answer any questions that I throw at him. He mentioned a lot of species names end with dae. Damn those latin names, I can’t remember any of them. I only know he spends a lot of effort to memorize these. According to him, a few beetles are poisonous. When provoked, they release acidic liquid that is extremely irritating to skin.
Even though I myself has seen so many bugs before, I could not stop saying WOW WOW WOW to all the display. This park is really something.
Later I entered the butterfly garden. As nectar is the food of butterfly, many flowers are planted. I was busy chasing the butterflies, trying to take their photos. It is a tough job though, as they always keep a distance away from me.
Jay says the caterpillars of butterfly do not have poisonous hair like the moth caterpillars. I can place it in my hand, and it feels like a soft plastic. When the eggs of butterfly become pupa, the workers will move them into a incubation room, to ensure a better chance of survival for butterfly to hatch.
How to distinguish a butterfly and a moth? A friend told me that when butterfly perches, its wings are closed, whereas moth’s will remain open.
There is another garden that has pitcher plant but I didn’t visit. Anyway, I will come back again.
In making of this blog, I had walked over 50KM of jungle trail but never bitten by a leech (surprise!). Personally I am quite afraid of leech, as if it is a slimmy monster that can crawl into my brain. Anyway, my passion on photography still makes me to explore area potentially lurked with army of leeches. One day I was taking photo in Botanical Garden (behind Liwagu Restaurant) of Kinabalu Park.
When I was busy shooting photo, I saw a leech crawling on the camera toward my eyes. Luckily I discovered it earlier, otherwise it would land on my eye. Quite a surprise coz I never expected to see leech in a garden where many people walking around. It is a small ground leech. I used a stick to relocate it to an open space for photo shooting.
The ground leech sensed my body heat and came to me in joy. As you can see in the photo below, it is a very tiny leech. Then I had a “crazy” idea of donating some blood to it. My friends probably thought that I was nut.
Even though leech scares me, I know it can do very very little harm to me. I decide to overcome my leech-phobia by letting it to bite me. I placed it on my arm. It crawled a bit then stopped. When I saw its head turned into pointy shape, I knew it was looking for sucking point.
The leech bite was less painful than a mosquito bite. In fact, I didn’t feel it. I was curious how much blood it could take, so I put a 50 cent coin next to it for comparison. In 10 minutes, its body size doubled.
After 15 minutes, its size tripled and showed no sign of quitting its dinner. I wanted to go for my dinner, so I just detached it with finger. It was very easy to be removed (probably it is small). Only a tiny wound left on my arm.
During blood sucking, the leech released a chemical that prevented my blood from clotting. The leech was gone, but my wound kept on bleeding for 2 hours. Imagine if you are bitten by 10 leeches, the mess they left behind will be quite a “scary” view, though it doesn’t hurt at all. I heard that the cigarette ash can stop the bleeding.
Anyway, this reduces my fear of leech by more than half. May be next time I can try Tiger Leech, which is about 15 times bigger than Ground Leech. If you think this is a big deal, try to look at this guy, who tried leech 30+ times bigger than Ground Leech! *me faint from fear*
Photos taken in Kinabalu Park, Sabah, Malaysia Borneo
